Values are what are important to you. They are one of the unconscious filters o the unconscious mind and dictate what you spend time on.

SO WHY LEARN VALUES AND CHANGE THEM?

Have you ever wondered why people behave in different ways and why some are more motivated by some things and others are motivated by other things? This is as a result of people’s values. Understanding values gives us a better understanding of a) their behaviour and b) what motivates them.

Consider your communications and how different they would be in various contexts such as business or relationships? I you understand what is important to that person then it means you are understanding their values. Therefore, if you can meet their values then they are going to be more engaged in your communications.

Maybe you have an area of your life that is not bringing you happiness or perhaps your career is not fulfilling you? The reasons for this and other situations is that it is not meeting your values. You have to remember that values are what are important to you. As a result if your situation is not meeting that then it leads to unfulfillment and unhappiness!

Why is it that some people in life get half way to their goal and then a few months later go ‘off track’? The reason is that their values are not aligned to their goal. Their values take them off. Perhaps your life is a ‘sign wave’ ie. it goes from being say very successful to not successful. This is because of a person’s AWAY FROM values.

This shows that it is very important to learn values – wouldn’t you like to have consistency through life? Having a knowledge of values will allow you to adjust the ‘thing’ in your value set so that you get more consistent results.

How much better would your relationships be if you truly understood what is important to your partner? It certainly would be better. You would both ‘sing from the same hymn sheet’!

Aligning your values to what you want in your life is certainly a great idea. VALUES are everything that drive you whether not successfully or successfully.

WHAT ARE VALUES?

They are filters of the unconscious mind with some content and are held in a hierarchy of importance so the most important things in your life will be number one and the not so big, lower down the hierarchy eg. Number four.

Values are expressed as a high level generalisation - they are quite abstract and ambiguous. During therapy work when values are elicited they are expressed as nominalisations. They are what you spend time and focus on. In other words, they determine your focus and thinking and thus your behaviour. So the importance of values is they are what motivates and rives you either TOWARDS or AWAY from something.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

TOWARDS values mean that a person is motivated by what they want. Using money as an example – a person is motivated to move away from what they fear as opposed TOWARDS what they want.

This can create a problem depending upon whether a person is ‘away’ or ‘towards’ motivated. As an example people with away from values would move ‘away from’ poverty. They are motivated to move away from what they fear as opposed to TOWARDS what they want. The problem is that when a person is ‘in poverty’ they work hard to make more money. Yet when they make more money they get further away and ultimately reach a point that their motivation around money has gone.

Therefore, this creates an unconscious crisis and the person re-plunges into poverty so they can be motivated again. If you are TOWARDS, the closer you get to money, the more consistently motivated you will be.

You can see why now that it is very important to look at your values and get rid of the AWAY FROM values. Therefore, your performance in life will be much better and you will get consistent results.